FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
All films are screened at the Stanford Perrott Lecture Hall
Alberta College of Art + Design, 1407 14th Avenue NW
FREE ADMISSION. For more information, call 403-284-7633 or see acad.ca/raff.html
Thursday 7:00 PM
Shary Boyle: Heartburn Porcelain
Director: Ewa Stern
Producer: Ewa Stern (CastYourArt)
Distributor: CastYourArt – Kunstverein
Colour, 9 minutes, English, 2009
Using escapism as a transformative attempt to extend beyond the bounds of historical periods and reality forms, Toronto-based artist Shary Boyle creates intricate and fantastical porcelain works. Reconfiguring the iconic form of the porcelain figurine through gendered and political frames, Boyle’s work is engrossing through its visual presence and narrative structures.
Ewa Stern is production manager and chief editor at CastYourArt in Vienna, Austria, a company that makes documentaries about artists, museums, exhibitions and other art-related themes. After immigrating to Canada from Poland in the 1990s, Stern studied in Montreal and worked as a visual researcher there at Images en Boîte.
HOW ARE YOU
Director: Jannik Splidsboel
Producers: Henrik Underbjerg, Stefan Frost
Distributor: Forward Entertainment / Radiator Film
Colour, 70 minutes, English and Danish with English subtitles, 2011
Working under the moniker Elmgreen & Dragset, the sharp and witty Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset have been partners in life and work for over 15 years. Jannik Splidsboel’s remarkable documentary brings us back to the couple’s early collaborative years, and shows a strong selection of their often highly controversial works, including their 2008 monument to homosexual victims of World War II in Berlin’s Tiergarten. The film’s focus is on the production of their installation The Collectors in the Danish and Nordic Pavilions at the 2009 Venice Biennale, which involved meticulously planned domestic settings, complete with real-estate agents who uncovered and described the uncanny details of their fictional inhabitants.
Jannik Splidsboel grew up in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has worked as an assistant director and production manager on several projects and has been mainly making documentaries since 1999. Aside from filmmaking, Splidsboel teaches in various international institutions.
Thursday 9:00 PM
Michel de Broin: Matters of Circulation
Director: Ewa Stern
Producer: Ewa Stern (CastYourArt)
Distributor: CastYourArt – Kunstverein
Colour, 6 minutes, English, 2008
Canadian artist Michel de Broin playfully challenges our understanding of objects and ideas that influence daily routines. His artwork subtly pokes fun at the ironic nature of progress and efficiency, often by highlighting an object’s discordant qualities by restructuring and re-contextualizing it. A brief look into the basis and creation of his work, this film focuses on de Broin’s public interventions and sculptures.
Ewa Stern is production manager and chief editor at CastYourArt in Vienna, Austria, a company that makes documentaries about artists, museums, exhibitions and other art-related themes. After immigrating to Canada from Poland in the 1990s, Stern studied in Montreal and worked as a visual researcher there at Images en Boîte.
Gnarr
Director : Gaukur Úlfarsson
Producers: Sigvaldi J. Kárason, Björn Ófeigsson
Distributor: Focus Features
Colour, 90 mins, Icelandic with English subtitles, 2010
Before the onset of the worldwide economic recession, the developed world was booming, and bankers and stockbrokers thought the gravy train would never end. Iceland seemed to be a supernova: too rich to fail and totally incorruptible. Yet, in a matter of weeks, their economy went sharply downhill, leaving the country totally bankrupt. Amid this chaos, “The Best Party” was born, a joke conceived by Iceland's most controversial and cynical comedian, Jon Gnarr. Initially intending the political party as a satire of the arrogance and false morality of existing parties, both left and right, he eventually, and entertainingly, became the unlikely mayor of the country’s capital city.
Gaukur Úlfarsson has established himself as one of Iceland’s most dangerous and outspoken directors over the last decade. He has directed and produced many television shows over the years, his most notable being The Silvia Night Show, in which he plays the show’s host, Silvia Night. Recently, Úlfarsson has done work for the National TV where he has directed and produced documentaries and news-related shows.
Saturday 1:00 PM
Tacita Dean
Director: Zara Hayes
Producer: Jane Burton
Distributor: Tate Media
Colour, 11 minutes, English, 2011
As the most recently commissioned artist to confront the challenge of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, Tacita Dean created Film, a silent, 35-mm looped film projected onto a monolith standing 13 metres tall. This documentary explores her process throughout the development of Film, as well as her advocacy for the protection of the celluloid-film medium.
Zara Hayes has worked as a documentary filmmaker ever since her graduation from Cambridge University in 2004. She has made films about visual arts for BBC Four and Tate Britain. One of her latest projects involved making a film with artist Ai Weiwei.
Thomas Ruff
Director: Ralph Goertz
Producer: Ralph Goertz
Distributor: IKS-Medienarchiv
Colour, 50 minutes, German with English subtitles, 2011
This film takes us into the studio of one of the best-known photographers in Germany, Thomas Ruff. Filmed over a period of two years, Ralph Goertz’s documentary shows a range of the artist’s multi-faceted body of work, including his new ma.r.s. series, involving manipulated images of the planet Mars taken by a satellite camera. Ruff studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under the photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, which influenced his interest in serial photography. His work has ranged from small-scale documentary-style photographs of domestic interiors, to large-scale passport-like portraits with monochrome backgrounds, to architectural photographs.
Ralph Goertz is the founder of Institut für Kunstdokumentation und Szenografie (IKS) in Düsseldorf, Germany, a company specializing in documentaries about contemporary art. Starting his career as a stage director, Goertz now works as a curator, filmmaker, television journalist and producer.
Saturday 2:30 PM
Chris Ofili: Exploding the Crystal
Director: Caroline Deeds
Producer: Kate Vogel
Distributor: Tate Media
Colour, 15 minutes, English, 2010
Chris Ofili is known for his brightly coloured ornamental paintings, which have included everything from collage cutouts to dried elephant dung. As a feature of a survey exhibition organized by Tate Modern, this film documents the artist as he speaks about the narratives and media that influenced his earlier work, and the development of his more recent work following his move to Trinidad in 2005.
Caroline Deeds studied fine art at the Central St. Martin’s School of Art. Upon her graduation, she taught and ran storytelling workshops in Nigeria, before returning to the UK to be an assistant editor for commercials and promos. Deeds has experimented with different storytelling traditions in the making and shooting of her films.
Gerhard Richter Painting
Director: Corinna Belz
Producer: Thomas Kufus
Distributor: Mongrel Media
Colour, 97 minutes, German and English with English subtitles, 2011
During the spring and summer months of 2009, filmmaker Corinna Belz was granted access to internationally renowned artist Gerhard Richter’s studio, where she quietly captured the artist as he worked on a series of large abstract paintings. This rare look at the now-80-year-old painter shows the incredible start-to-finish creation of several of his “squeegee”-style paintings. We also see Richter planning for and attending various exhibitions, and his casual contemplation of his working process with art historian Benjamin Buchloh and gallerist Marian Goodman.
Corinna Belz studied philosophy, art history and media sciences in Cologne, Zurich and Berlin. She is an actor, writer and documentary filmmaker. Belz has worked on television productions and feature-length films of various genres.
Saturday 5:00 PM
Gabriel Orozco
Director: Susan Doyon
Producer: Kate Vogel
Distributor: Tate Media
Colour, 9 minutes, English, 2011
Gabriel Orozco looks to the urban landscape to compile his collections, capture his symmetry-laden photographs, and create his playful sculptures. Shown in his studio and at his 2011 exhibition at Tate Modern, Orozco ponders the elements of good art, and explains his mission to relate to a broad audience by making light-hearted and accessible work.
Susan Doyon graduated from the Theatre Department at Montreal’s Concordia University. She has lived in Japan and Canada working as a producer and a freelance theatre director. She works on a variety of broadcast programs for ACA Films, BBC, Tate, Channel 4 and Discovery International.
Portrait of Resistance: The Art and Activism of Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge
Director: Roz Owen
Editor: Jim Miller
Producers: Jim Miller, Roz Owen
Distributor: Vtape
Colour, 72 minutes, English, 2011
Toronto-based artist-activists Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge have been engaging community-based and social-justice issues through their extraordinary staged photography for the last 35 years. Beginning their collaboration as a young married couple in the 1970s, Condé & Beveridge’s work has addressed themes surrounding the labour movement, the rights of migrant workers, the global financial crisis and the state of the environment. Portrait of Resistance: The Art and Activism of Carole Condé & Karl Beveridge shows the artists in action, engaging and collaborating with the community, taking their experiences to the studio, and, then, creating powerful visual narratives that challenge the way we see the world.
Roz Owen, together with her partner Jim Miller, set up Anti-Amnesiac Productions in 2006 with the aim of creating memorable, socially engaged media. In 2008, their short documentary “Community Matters” won the OAAG visual Art Film Award. She has worked both collaboratively with Miller and independently on various projects and films.
Saturday 7:00 PM
Mark Dion
Director: Ralph Goertz
Producer: Ralph Goertz
Distributor: IKS – Medienarchiv
Colour, 16 minutes, English, 2011
Mark Dion’s work critiques culturally constructed ideas about the natural world. His “cabinet of curiosities”–style exhibitions channel early-Enlightenment theories that praise the gaining of knowledge through first-hand interactions with things. Filmed during the setup of Dion’s “Oceanomania” exhibition at two museum spaces in Monaco, the artist discusses how the history of knowledge informs his work.
Ralph Goertz is the founder of IKS (Institut für Kunstdokumentation und Szenografie) in Düsseldorf, Germany, a company specializing in documentaries about contemporary art. Starting his career as a stage director, Goertz now works as a curator, filmmaker, television journalist and producer.
Oliviero Toscani: The Rage of Images
Directors: Peter Scharf, Katja Duregger
Producer: Birgit Schulz, Bildersturm Filmproduktion GmbH
Distributor: Bildersturm Filmproduktion GmbH, Köln, Germany
Colour, 44 minutes, English and Italian with English subtitles, 2010
A pioneer of “anti-advertising,” Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani is known for bringing extreme forms of realism into the business of the advertising world. Partnering with the fashion label Benetton in the 1990s, Toscani was responsible for an ad campaign that consisted of imagery that bluntly and controversially addressed issues such as HIV/AIDS, war, racism and religion. The artist questions the rare public pairing of tragedy and consumption, and through sometimes-disturbing means, challenges the ideals of a media-saturated society.
Peter Scharf was born in Hagen, Germany. He studied history, German linguistics and Anglo-American history at the University of Köln. He worked for many years as a freelance journalist, mainly for music magazines and broadcasters, such as MTV and VIVA. Since 2000, Scharf has directed several documentary films.
Katja Duregger was born in Stuttgart, Germany and studied at the Universities of Köln, Tübingen and Marbug. She worked for various radio stations and television production companies, before turning in 2000 to freelance television journalism and documentary filmmaking.
Sunday 1:00 PM
Christine Sun Kim, A Selby Film
Director: The Selby
Producers: Lauren Sherman, Dave Saltzman
Colour, 10 minutes, English, 2011
This is an atmospheric and intimate portrait of artist Christine Sun Kim. Deaf since birth, she explores the physicality of sound through her practice, which involves making sound tangible. Using lo-fi experiments and performances, Kim attempts to translate sound though movement and images. Made during a performance in her Brooklyn studio, this film is an insightful glimpse into the artist’s creative process.
The Selby is a project by Brooklyn-based artist Todd Selby that offers an insider’s view of creative individuals in their personal spaces. Over the last few years, The Selby has gained increasing popularity, contributing to several well-known publications and collaborating with top companies such as Louis Vuitton and Hennessy.
Massimo Vitali
Director: Giampiero D’Angeli
Producer: Luca Molducci
Distributor: Giart – Visioni d’arte
Colour, 50 minutes, Italian with English subtitles, 2011
Taking his large-format camera along to crowded public spaces such as beaches, dunes, river banks and pools, photographer Massimo Vitali spends long days observing the way groups of people interact with each other and the landscapes they occupy. The result of these endeavours is Vitali’s crisp, unified and unmistakable style. In this film, Vitali allows himself to be observed during a series of shoots in the height of summer. Back in his studio, he goes through his prints and muses about his process and the beautiful subtleties he captures in apparently insignificant events.
Giampiero D’Angeli is an Italian director living in Paris. He has directed over 20 documentaries about contemporary artists, including Maurizio Galimberti, Mimmo Jodice, Ferdinando Scianna and Gabriele Basilico.
Sunday 2:30 PM
Rachel Whiteread
Director: James Price
Producer: Kate Vogel
Distributor: Tate Media
Colour, 8 minutes, English, 2010
Rachel Whiteread uses different methods of drawing in order to make connections between her collections of objects and the sculptures that result from them. The drawings serve as a way for the artist to “worry through” her work process, with the idea of stopping objects and spaces in time in order to study them. This film takes a look at a selection of Whiteread’s work, and through the artist, we discover how the act of drawing became an integral part of her observational process.
James Price received his MA in Documentary Direction at the National Film and television School in the UK. He has been a lecturer in filmmaking at the School of Arts and Media at the University of Brighton and, since 2008, he has run the production company Field Studies Ltd.
Eames: The Architect and the Painter
Producers: Jason Cohn, Bill Jersey
Distributor: First Run Features
Colour, 84 minutes, English, 2011
Husband-and-wife team Charles and Ray Eames are widely regarded as America’s most important designers. Perhaps best remembered for its mid-century plywood and fiberglass furniture, the Eames Office also created a mind-bending variety of other products, from splints for wounded military during World War II, to photography, interiors, multimedia exhibitions, graphics, games, films and toys. But the Eames’ personal lives and influence on significant events in American life—from the development of modernism to the rise of the computer age—have been less widely understood. Narrated by James Franco, Eames: The Architect and the Painter is the first film since their deaths dedicated to these creative geniuses and their work.
Jason Cohn produced various PBS programs prior to the making of his first feature documentary, Eames: The Architect and the Painter. As a public-radio reporter, producer and managing editor, Jason covered the culture of technology for Beyond Computers, and issues of Asian art, culture and politics for the nationally syndicated program Pacific Time. He has written documentaries for National Geographic and PBS, and his articles have appeared in various major periodicals.
Bill Jersey has been producing documentaries for broadcast television for over forty years. In the early 1960s he established his reputation as one of the pioneers of the cinéma-vérité movement. Since then he has produced documentaries for all of the major networks and in association with PBS, WNET New York, KCET Los Angeles, WGBH Boston, and others.
ILLINGWORTH KERR GALLERY
Alberta College of Art + Design
Everyone Welcome
Free Admission
10am–6pm, Tuesday–Saturday
February 2–May 26, 2012
Theo Sims
The Candahar
Theo Sims’ The Candahar, which was first presented by Alberta College of Art + Design in 2006, is a detailed recreation of a Belfast public house, named for a South Belfast street. The installation is complete when staffed in collaboration with two Belfast bartenders Chris and Conor Roddy, who act as unscripted performers. The Candahar fuses the authentic with fantasy, spectacle with stage, and at its heart acts as a catalyst for conversation, debate and dialogue—and a pint here and there.
Social interaction is at the heart of Sims’ The Candahar, a sculpture that invites our participation, and asks us how we might consider the familiarity of a neighborhood pub as a proposition for something more. Theo Sims has been an Artist in Residence at the Alberta College of Art + Design since early November 2011, rebuilding The Candahar in collaboration with the college's faculty, students and the local community.
During its four-month exhibition at ACAD, The Candahar will serve as a site for talks, performances, and events as part of The Creative Common series of events initiated by ACAD faculty and guests. The Creative Common is a forum that brings together dynamic and creative individuals to discuss and debate issues informing perspectives on art and design practices.
Chris and Conor Roddy in Theo Sims’ mixed-media installation The Candahar (2006–2011). Photo: Guy L'Heureux.
Please see acad.ca/ikg.html or call 403-284-7633 for further information.
ILLINGWORTH KERR GALLERY
Alberta College of Art + Design
Everyone welcome
Free Admission
10am-6pm, Tuesday–Saturday
March 15-April 4, 2012
2012 All Faculty Exhibition
Part of a continuing series of exhibitions that showcase the diversity of work being produced by ACAD’s creative community, this exhibition gives students a glimpse of the issues their instructors are currently exploring in their own practices. A broad cross-section of activity is represented: illustration, sculpture, graphic design, advertising, photography, ceramics, fibre, glass, print media, media art, digital technology, painting and drawing.
May 17–May 26, 2012
ACAD Graduating Students’ Exhibition
The 26th annual Graduating Student Show is an exciting chance to view innovative and creative processes of ACAD students and to meet some of Canada’s most exciting emerging artists and designers. Join us as we celebrate the achievements of over 200 graduates showcased throughout the college.
Please see www.acad.ca/ikg.html or call 403-284-7633 for further information.
ACAD is a leading centre for education and research, and a catalyst for creative inquiry and cultural development. We engage the world and create possibilities.
ACAD Graduating Students Exhibition 2011 Photo: Dwayne Norman
All films are screened at the Stanford Perrott Lecture Hall
Alberta College of Art + Design, 1407 14th Avenue NW
FREE ADMISSION. For more information, call 403-284-7633 or see acad.ca/raff.html
Schedule subject to change.